I’m Mad As Hell And I’m Not Going To Take This Anymore: or We Have Come to This Great Stage of Fools

I have two titles for this poem: the first is taken from a line in Sidney Lumet’s Network (1976) and the second is an excerpt from a longer quote from William Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Is any of this real? Look at this
fantasy. We have synthetic
emotions as pills that spur on
health-depleting ills.

The mind is assaulted through advertising.
Chemicals melt our brains through food.
Mind-numbing lectures as media that
tap into our thoughts through Facebook.

Reality is gone. Whilst munching on GMOs
we became plagued with warfare and foes.
We turned off the power and removed the batteries,
as we went to work in internet factories.

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore” is the main line from Network (1976)(Network, MGM)

We bought into the corrupt like FIFA and Amazon
and Apple with their methods (at least morally).
There’s something shady going down!
All built on the blinking numbers sprawling
through the serpentine woods of Wall Street Town.

I hate all the contrived facades and ludicrous lies,
like how the masses glorify Steve Jobs a good man
as he made billions off the backs of children
in far off lands I can’t even pronounce.

Our idols are simulations. Earth itself is a lie, a hoax!
A narration of rubbish disguised as insight, as Facebook
claims our thoughts and likes, while Twitter wizard
Trump tauntingly tweets Korea’s Kim on a daily.

We’re in this culture of junk, due to our
unwavering favour of the question, “how much?”
All over human welfare, and then we had the
Chilcot Inquiry’s affair with Tony Blair.

If justice was done properly, ex-prime minister Tony Blair would be in jail for war crimes(The Chilcot Inquiry, bbc.co.uk)

We all know why we have opted for this life.
We like living in denial, putting others on trial,
under the sedation of newspeak, living in this
Orwellian reality. And Big Brother is watching!

This is a kingdom we’ve lived in for far too long.
It’s ridiculous, selfish, ghastly and wrong.
A comedy of errors and as I read this
in high street-bought clothes,
I’m as real as the 100% Beef meat at Maccies.

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About

So as the world looks hellbent on tearing itself apart, as the pallor of politics rears its ugly head daily, as alternative facts runs riot through the webs of the WiFi, as Trump battles Kim through the trench warfare of Twitter, as chemitrails pollute our skies, I, Tré Ventour, have set up a website for my poetic ramblings and stories.

Whether I am poking the underbelly of Britain’s bulldog by dissecting the concepts of imperialism and Empire or writing a quick verse of what happened on the bus one day or my family or making light of Teresa May’s antics through the wheat fields of her undecipherable semantics, this will be the place for my poetic ramblings.

Other themes will include politics, war, religion, Northampton, history, biography and society, and more lighthearted topics as well.